Worst CEO 2010: Goldman’s Blankfein vs. BP’s Hayward

Who gets your vote for most heinous CEO of the year? From Marketwatch:

Tony Hayward is Lloyd Blankfein’s new best friend. For months, Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has been the CEO ALTH (America Loves To Hate). He’s been defiant before Congress, unapologetic, a defender of ruthless Wall Street practices, invoking God and bare-knuckle capitalism in the same breath.

His firm has been accused of betting against clients, masking Greece’s debt problems, taking backdoor bailouts through American International Group Inc. and good, old-fashioned fraud.

Enter Hayward, the bumbling, stumbling chief executive of BP PLC, and the man ultimately responsible for the disaster that began April 20 on Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hayward’s BP is blamed for 11 dead workers, an environmental catastrophe, a slow and inadequate response and insensitivity to the havoc his company has sprung upon nature and the livelihood of those on the Gulf Coast.

In his own way, he’s supplanted Blankfein as the nation’s, and perhaps the world’s, most hated CEO. But that’s the impression. To get scientific results we need a “tale of the tape” to measure just which CEO is really the biggest jerk.